From an article I just read in Wisconsinwatch.org, here’s some staggering data for you.

The writer writes: “In the best-case scenario, we’ll be able to eat all the Lake Michigan lake trout we want without worrying about getting cancer from the PCBs — in another 20 years.”

Twenty years?!

And that’s just the BEST case scenario. Worse case is people in the Lake Michigan area won’t be able to eat lake trout until 2046.

Just as a recap, PCBs are toxic chemicals that, if exposed to living organisms, produce cancer. They have been reported as “the contaminant of greatest concern to human and ecosystem health in the Great Lakes.”

That’s the what the U.S.E.P.A. (United States Environmental Protection Agency) says. They’ve measured how long it will take for the lake to rid itself of PCBs.

So how did these fish get introduced to PCBs and where did it come from? Well, apparently the Monsanto company manufactured tons and tons of the chemicals from 1929 – 1977. The waste was obviously dumped into some body of water and made its way into the great lakes. PCBs were banned in 1979, but huge traces of the chemicals are still found in the Great Lakes.